Friday, April 25, 2008

Parliament's recent decision to mark the 1916 revolt of the Kyrgyz against Russians as a memorial day in August sparked a small international row between Kyrgyzstan and Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on April 22 saying that his decision is "counterproductive to the current friendly relations between our country and people."

In 1916 ethnic Kyrgyz revolted against the Tsar's decision to draft the local population to provide rear service in the WWI. The Kyrgyz revolted killing thousands of Russian settlers. The Russian army responded accordingly. The Kyrgyz then fled the Russian army to China (most returned after the 1917 Communist Revolution). Estimates put the death toll at 150,000 Kyrgyz (roughly 30% of the population).

However, it is accepted that the draft was just a trigger to revolt against the oppression of the colonial Russia, who had been seizing the most fertile land from Kyrgyz (and Kazakh) and giving it to settlers from Russian during the previous 20 years. As a result by 1916, Russian settlers, who made 6% of the whole population of Semirechie (roughly Northern Kyrgyzstan and Southern Kazakhstan), owned 57.7% of all arable land, while the local population (94%) owned the remaining 42.3%. (Source)

The Russian government, subsequently the Russian people, including those in the former Soviet Union, are often nervous about admitting wrongdoings in its history, either by the Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union.

This unwillingness to accept past mistakes has been counterproductive to the Kyrgyz-Russian relations.